Posts Tagged fears

The conference is not too far off and people are getting excited! I get emails every day from people about the conference. We also have our final sale on tickets which is $50 off if you use code: TINY2013. I was talking to someone yesterday about how exciting they were about getting to meet a lot of tiny housers and it got me thinking.

So here is my the 5 conversations you’ll have at the Tiny House Conference.

1. That one burning question will get answered – 10 different ways

The tiny house brain trust we have at this event will be staggering, we all have those questions that we are just dying to get answered by people who have been there. You can talk with people who have been there and done it, you can talk to others who are just starting out, and you can talk with other tiny house dreams too.

2. You’ll share you’re concerns/reasons why you haven’t started building and we’ll show you how to overcome them.

The biggest barrier to me starting my own tiny house wasn’t money or time or knowledge, it was me, myself. You’ll hear from people who have built their own homes and live in them full time; for every worry, concern, barrier, there at least one person at the event that overcame it and will share how they did it.

3. You’ll talk about going to the bathroom in a bucket.

There is an un-can-ny (ha!) propensity for tiny house people to eventually start talking about how you use a composting toilet. After presenting at so many events I’ve lost count, someone always asks.

4. You’ll meet people near you that are as excited about tiny houses as you are

The best part about tiny house events is that everyone there is already on board with tiny houses. So many times if we talk about tiny houses people are quick to question the idea of tiny houses or worse, rain on your parade. The people coming to this event have already wholeheartedly bought into tiny houses. It means we can move past the objections and move to action.

5. You’ll stop talking about “one day” and move to action

There is a point in every tiny houser’s journey when you stop asking question, you stop worrying, you stop making reasons why not and then you just do it! Events like this always leave me energized about tiny houses and they build a flame within you that is hard to put out. It shows us a clear path in our minds and you gain the support that you need to take that first step!

I was driving into work today when the idea came to me for this article. Why does it have to be so difficult to achieve the life so many of us would love to live? There are no simple answers to our reasons, but we need to face them head on. Since I don’t like to focus on the negatives too much, my next post will be on some of the possible solutions and approaches to overcome these barriers.

Land

One of the largest hurdles for people wanting to live in a Tiny House is access to land. Land is expensive, in growing short supply and people want a balance of having land and being close to city or town centers where they can access services, entertainment and employment. These things are often in conflict with each other. The closer to the city center, the smaller and more expensive the lots. To have a Tiny House, you don’t need much land for the actual house, but you do need enough to be able to obscure the house from prying eyes in order to fly under the radar of code enforcement and curmudgeons.

Loans

At this point, banks don’t feel that Tiny Houses are a viable option because they don’t have a good resale value. This means their loan isn’t secured with collateral. It is this dynamic that means for us to get access to loans, we need to get creative. Some borrow from a family member, some save up years to pay with cash, others use credit cards and carry a balance. There isn’t a good answer in this area yet, it’s a tough problem to crack.

Laws

Despite the approach of putting a tiny house on trailer, this isn’t the magic bullet that it is often claimed to be. The issue comes when you look at your municipality’s minimum habitable structure definition. These definitions almost always exclude Tiny Houses from being a dwelling and give code enforcement a strong leg to stand on when it comes to condemning your Tiny Home and/or levying fines. This code does serve a good purpose; it prevents abuse on the part of slum lords and gives a mechanism for the courts to hold slum lords accountable.

Social Pressures

In our society today, bigger is better, more is better, we are conditioned to want more and more stuff. These cultural norms are a very strong current in maintaining the status quo. Tiny Houses fly in the face of such things, questioning much of what people hold dear. People can react in a very visceral way when we suggest there is a problem with the way things are. People work their whole lives to get as much stuff as they can, to suggest that is wrong, in a way, is to suggest their life’s work is wrong. People can get very defensive and social pressures can make the shift to living a simple life in a Tiny House very difficult with some people. We need to be sure not to come off as judgmental or preachy, we want to present it simply as an alternative.

Fear

This ties into a few of the above points, but is none the less a real barrier. When faced with the prospect of bucking the system, initiating a radical lifestyle change, and spending a good chunk of money to do it, it can be scary. I know from personal experience when you are close to the moment where you must make the decision, where you have to take the leap, a whole series of self-doubts come to the surface. You are left trying to decide if these doubts are simply normal big decision jitters or if they are valid concerns your unconscious is trying to make you aware of. The sorting of these thoughts and processing of them is taxing, a little emotional, and of course scary. Even those of us who deal with change well will struggle with this significantly, fear is a powerful emotion and we must face it to achieve our goal.